Richard Ennis: executive director of finance, London Borough of Lambeth.
| Position | ONE2ONE - Interview |
You've managed to pull Lambeth council out of a 28m [pounds sterling] deficit and generate a surplus of more than 20m [pounds sterling] within two years. How did you manage that?
I don't think anyone expected to make quite so much progress this quickly. It's been a real team effort. The chief executive and leader of the council made finance the top priority. They took the view that "it doesn't matter what else we do--if we don't sort out the finances, nothing will work". We also mounted a big recruitment exercise to attract the right people. It meant tipping the salaries a bit, but it also meant that I had a team of assistant directors who knew how to get results.
You've obviously played a major role in the turnaround yourself.
I've driven it, but I wouldn't have got anywhere without the team. Goodwill is vital and you need your staff to reinforce the message of improvement and delivery. The main focus was on delivery. There wasn't really a budgetary process in Lambeth, so we brought in PwC to create a process to deliver a three-year financial plan. It set the framework and we built on that. I wrote a clear financial plan about what we were going to do and when. We had very defined targets and we made it clear that failure wasn't an option. I also made sure that I didn't pull any punches at the outset. Everyone needed to know how bad the finances were and we all had to be ready to make some sacrifices. We were a new team, so we were able to put all of the problems on the table without feeling responsible for those previous errors.
There must been some political resistance to the changes you were planning.
I think the borough's history was so bad that, although some people might have objected in principle to such a tough financial stance, they stayed quiet. The leadership knew that they had to sort it out, because otherwise central government would have intervened although I'm not sure that even the government really wanted to run the borough's services directly.
What were the worst problems?
It simply wasn't very focused here. A lot of it was poor financial management--poor debt control in particular. When I arrived we had over 40m [pounds sterling] in grant claims to central government that hadn't been completed for various reasons. There was also a culture of non-payment that had to be addressed, particularly in areas such as council tax and parking fines. We made a point of forging a much better relationship with the collection agencies...
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